"Clickers"

[Krazed]

No, but I asked in all seriousness.

 

How on earth are you going to manouver behind an enemy that is trying to kite you, then use your backstab abilities, stuns, CC's and all that stuff ?

 

You just said "both ways work" without actually explaining everything ?

 

I know it's just impossible to be efficient and good as a clicker, when you're playing a melee DPS class.

 

I'd love to see some "good clicker ownage" pvp videos. Anybody has some ?

 

It works for me, My record in pvp is even improving. Heres the thing though I'm clicking an on-screen keyboard.

[Trotmeister]

No need. G13 is for noobs. You can get more keybinds on your normal keyboard. Hell I even have more keybinds on my razer naga mouse than he has on his G13+Mouse.

I could easily get several times more keybinds via alt+, shift+ method, I just don't want to make it complicated. 30 keys is fine. Plus you can switch between layouts on the fly, though I'm saving those for the other classes/specs.

 

As for Naga, well, as pretty much all of Razer products, it looks cool, but it has one major shortcoming. In Naga's case it's the fact that all the keys are set very close together and are of practically the same shape. You can easily press the wrong key in the heat of a battle. That's exactly what I like about G300 - all the keys are spread as much as possible and are differently shaped. Of course, I wouldn't mind having a few more keys, but eh.

Edited March 20, 2012 by Trotmeister

[byteresistor]

I deny it.

 

I don't care about efficiency

Erm... what?

 

and I don't want to bother taking the time to learn keybinding.

Then you have no say in the argument. You cannot compare two things if you have ever experienced only of them.

[MMornard]

Why did you put that idea into my head?

 

You're welcome...

[Meldwyn]

No need. G13 is for noobs. You can get more keybinds on your normal keyboard. Hell I even have more keybinds on my razer naga mouse than he has on his G13+Mouse.

 

G13 is for elitists! Sorry you don't make the cut. Nothing, and I mean, nothing beats the thumb joystick, comfort, and ease of keybinding!

 

Razor Naga... lol G700 is the bomb.

[Caelith]

The only game where clicking would be a downside would be if you where playing a action mmo which requires more moving than anything.

 

Ontopic i click out of lazyness, but i can imagine some rogue characters would be more efficient as keybound.

[Dayln]

This is still going on?

 

Do what is working for you, ignore people that are so insecure that they have to try and justify that their way is the only way by berating others that are doing it a different way.

 

Don’t be afraid to try different things, but don’t be intimidated by the insecure.

[CeiLican]

Okay, when someone thinks they have a right to criticize how another interacts with the machine and assumes they can think better of themselves then another. That person is a fool.

 

I prefer a flight sim/mech combat game with a Joystick and throttle, however there are those that can play better with a mouse and keyboard. yes I can play "better" then others. Same goes for strictly mouse and keyboard games.

 

A buddy of mine, had an "odd" way of holding the controller when we would play games on any of the earlier consoles, people would make fun of him for it, but hey when he kicked your *** at a fighting game or beat your score at a points based game. The laughing died quickly. Not to say he didn't lose his fair share, but he just played differently and it was effecitve.

 

Sometimes the level of arrogance I see in people is truly appalling.

 

To hell with all of you that think you have a right to criticize another for his/her play style when your own, when put under the microscope will show it's faults.

 

Not a single person here can provide even remotely accurate statistics to show that one style of play is less efficient then another.

 

To each his own. Respect others choices.

 

 

As a matter of a lesson my Network Admin Instructor denied us use of a mouse or the entire first month of classes. We had to work with just the keyboard alone from DOS Prompt to win 98SE, 2000, XP. Server 2000 and Server 03. Not to mention other applications and what not to work on a PC with out the luxury of pointing and clicking. Yes it was fun, yes it was a challenge, but I learned how to use a keyboard quite well.

Edited March 20, 2012 by CeiLican

[ragamer]

Erm... There is nothing to discuss here.

 

 

Preference-wise

 

You can't discuss what some ppl is more comfortable with... Is as pointless as to discuss if pink is better than yellow.

 

If a player is not comfortable with his control scheme... Doen't matter how "good" he can be, he will become tired faster and less focused on the activity he has at hand.

 

 

Performance-wise

 

Nothing to discuss neither, a clicker is imposing himself the following limitations (At different grades, depending on physical shape, attention level, etc, etc)

 

 

Less actions per unit of time

 

- Most actions requires 2 pipelined steps. Click to select your target followed by click to trigger the action. Meanwhile a Key + Mouse can perform this 2 steps concurrently (or very close to). The degradation is propotional to how often you are forced to change the target of your actions and the distance between the targeting elements and the action elements of the UI used.

 

 

Less combat awareness

 

- Clicking a given button requires your EYES to follow the mouse cursor. Activating a key press do not. This means that a key user stays more time looking at the action increasing the chances to react faster at changing conditions.

 

 

Less precission while moving

 

- The fact that Mouse Steering allows for variable rotation speeds means that players that use keys can choose to minimize the time needed to perform any facing change WHILE activating powers.

 

 

Impossible Actions

 

Depending on the details of the UI of the particular game a clicker cannot take advantage of some specific, and very common, maneuvers like:

 

- Mouse Hover Targeting. Specifically designed to cut down reaction time for key users facing frequent target swaps.

 

- Preaiming Ground AOE reticles. A clicker simply cannot pretarget the zone to trigger a ground targeted AOE attack.

 

- Multiple actions. A clicker simply cannot activate multiple buttons at the same time... A key user can do it arranging buttons in rows.

 

 

So repeating myself... there is nothing to discuss. There are users that sacrifice performance for comfortability that will help them stay focused for longer on the game...

 

...And users that want to give always the max performance possible.

Edited March 20, 2012 by ragamer

[asbalana]

I posted earlier that I use the top twelve keys and click the rest. I've always played dps and have had no problem keeping up with or surpassing other players in dungeons and other group content. I did try key binding but ended up being all thumbs and not liking it.

 

Then a week ago my wife rolled a Sith Warrior and I a SI heals to be complimentary. We play as a team. As my number of abilities grew and covered the top bar, I started to get a little frustrated because switching back and forth between healing and damage by clicking and just trying to heal by clicking took to long and required a lot of mouse movement. So I tried separating my heals from my damage and keybinding the heals. It was like I was hit with a magic wand. I can now quickly bubble my wife's SW mid leap, switch to dps and target and attack a mob and then target her and throw heals, all without moving the cursor and without clicking one thing. After one day of hitting the wrong buttons and having to stop and think about what was bound where, it became natuaral and the play with key bindings is so fast and smooth that it blows me out. Heroics that were hard or not doable became a snap. I tried a flashpoint with my JC sage healer and again was blown away. With the keybinds I did comparable damage to the other three players and was able to switch to heals and keep everyone up and healthy.

 

I do not have a lot of key binds at this time (enough to do the job), but am slowly increasing the number as I get use to the ones that I have. I still have a long way to go and for example can't get my mouse buttons to work with swtor and that seems to be a problem with logitec mouses. I am starting to think that however you play the game is the right way for you, especially if you are enjoying yourself. I did well without keybinds and had fun. I know that I will be using more and more key binds and have started to look at my pure dps characters to see how I can improve my rotation and increase my effectiveness using keybinds.

[Marmerus]

I could easily get several times more keybinds via alt+, shift+ method, I just don't want to make it complicated. 30 keys is fine. Plus you can switch between layouts on the fly, though I'm saving those for the other classes/specs.

 

As for Naga, well, as pretty much all of Razer products, it looks cool, but it has one major shortcoming. In Naga's case it's the fact that all the keys are set very close together and are of practically the same shape. You can easily press the wrong key in the heat of a battle. That's exactly what I like about G300 - all the keys are spread as much as possible and are differently shaped. Of course, I wouldn't mind having a few more keys, but eh.

I got 36 keybinds on the mouse in WoW. In this game I only need 12.

The naga has markings on where the buttons are so there is no problem using the mouse after a while. I have had it for over a year and been using it actively in most MMOs and in some FPS.

G13 is for elitists! Sorry you don't make the cut. Nothing, and I mean, nothing beats the thumb joystick, comfort, and ease of keybinding!

 

Razor Naga... lol G700 is the bomb.

You get more buttons on the keyboard so why bother with the G13? Keybinding is still the same. Press ONE button and modifier to bind it.

[Ujest]

Human anatomy is evidence you stubborn nerfherder. Everyone knows how it works. How can you argue against it? 5 fingers vs. 1 mouse cursor. Where's the controversy here? Hell forget anatomy, how about math? Do I need more arguments to back this up?... Even though I have given more, such as the fact that the vast vast vast majority of players in gaming tournaments keybind. You telling me this is just a wild coincidence with no relevance? Or where's that other guy who simply dismissed this inconvinient truth by saying "well we clickers just don't care for competitive play"? I hope you don't go down that road in your next argument.

 

Forgot a few things that even things out a bit. Such as keyboard delay, most keyboards do not process simultaneously pressed keys, keyboard buffering, USB or PS2 keyboard connection (factor in the USB delay caused by band width restriction and the extra processing the reported keypress goes through), Global Cool Down times, key press delays programmed into the game by the devs to help prevent macros and bots, and so on. So, to my thinking, clickers and keypressors are pretty close to equal.

[Rogoo]

Erm... There is nothing to discuss here.

 

 

Preference-wise

 

You can't discuss what some ppl is more comfortable with... Is as pointless as to discuss if pink is better than yellow.

 

If a player is not comfortable with his control scheme... Doen't matter how "good" he can be, he will become tired faster and less focused on the activity he has at hand.

 

 

Performance-wise

 

Nothing to discuss neither, a clicker is imposing himself the following limitations (At different grades, depending on physical shape, attention level, etc, etc)

 

 

Less actions per unit of time

 

- Most actions requires 2 pipelined steps. Click to select your target followed by click to trigger the action. Meanwhile a Key + Mouse can perform this 2 steps concurrently (or very close to). The degradation is propotional to how often you are forced to change the target of your actions and the distance between the targeting elements and the action elements of the UI used.

 

 

Less combat awareness

 

- Clicking a given button requires your EYES to follow the mouse cursor. Activating a key press do not. This means that a key user stays more time looking at the action increasing the chances to react faster at changing conditions.

 

 

Less precission while moving

 

- The fact that Mouse Steering allows for variable rotation speeds means that players that use keys can choose to minimize the time needed to perform any facing change WHILE activating powers.

 

 

Impossible Actions

 

Depending on the details of the UI of the particular game a clicker cannot take advantage of some specific, and very common, maneuvers like:

 

- Mouse Hover Targeting. Specifically designed to cut down reaction time for key users facing frequent target swaps.

 

- Preaiming Ground AOE reticles. A clicker simply cannot pretarget the zone to trigger a ground targeted AOE attack.

 

- Multiple actions. A clicker simply cannot activate multiple buttons at the same time... A key user can do it arranging buttons in rows.

 

 

So repeating myself... there is nothing to discuss. There are users that sacrifice performance for comfortability that will help them stay focused for longer on the game...

 

...And users that want to give always the max performance possible.

 

Hear! Hear!

 

Very good post man. Pretty much sums the whole debate up.

[Marmerus]

Forgot a few things that even things out a bit. Such as keyboard delay, most keyboards do not process simultaneously pressed keys, keyboard buffering, USB or PS2 keyboard connection (factor in the USB delay caused by band width restriction and the extra processing the reported keypress goes through), Global Cool Down times, key press delays programmed into the game by the devs to help prevent macros and bots, and so on. So, to my thinking, clickers and keypressors are pretty close to equal.

There are instant spells that does not trigger global cooldowns. And anyone using trinket loses valuable time because there is no global cooldown on those either.

 

And the latency on the keyboard is so low your fingers is probably a bigger bottleneck than the buffering. Unless ofc you have a USB keyboard and your CPU is overloaded. But in that case you don't have playable framerates anyway.

 

Only thing that is making clickers and keybinders equal in this game is the extra delay in the game engine. As keybinder you more than often cancel out your instant cast spells just because of your fast key presses. And you spend MUCH time watching animations of abilities that has not been cast because of the god awful crap game engine.

 

Yeah and the game engine should not have made it out of the beta before it was fixed. This game really needs a couple of more years in development.

[Dayln]

The developers goal of the game was not specifically differentiate the advantages of clickers vs key binders

 

That was not in their mission statement, and not in any way the purpose of the game.

[MackumDog]

This argument assumes you are human....I use force powers to move my keys

[vandana_]

Erm... There is nothing to discuss here.

 

 

Preference-wise

 

You can't discuss what some ppl is more comfortable with... Is as pointless as to discuss if pink is better than yellow.

 

If a player is not comfortable with his control scheme... Doen't matter how "good" he can be, he will become tired faster and less focused on the activity he has at hand.

 

 

Performance-wise

 

Nothing to discuss neither, a clicker is imposing himself the following limitations (At different grades, depending on physical shape, attention level, etc, etc)

 

 

Less actions per unit of time

 

- Most actions requires 2 pipelined steps. Click to select your target followed by click to trigger the action. Meanwhile a Key + Mouse can perform this 2 steps concurrently (or very close to). The degradation is propotional to how often you are forced to change the target of your actions and the distance between the targeting elements and the action elements of the UI used.

 

 

Less combat awareness

 

- Clicking a given button requires your EYES to follow the mouse cursor. Activating a key press do not. This means that a key user stays more time looking at the action increasing the chances to react faster at changing conditions.

 

 

Less precission while moving

 

- The fact that Mouse Steering allows for variable rotation speeds means that players that use keys can choose to minimize the time needed to perform any facing change WHILE activating powers.

 

 

Impossible Actions

 

Depending on the details of the UI of the particular game a clicker cannot take advantage of some specific, and very common, maneuvers like:

 

- Mouse Hover Targeting. Specifically designed to cut down reaction time for key users facing frequent target swaps.

 

- Preaiming Ground AOE reticles. A clicker simply cannot pretarget the zone to trigger a ground targeted AOE attack.

 

- Multiple actions. A clicker simply cannot activate multiple buttons at the same time... A key user can do it arranging buttons in rows.

 

 

So repeating myself... there is nothing to discuss. There are users that sacrifice performance for comfortability that will help them stay focused for longer on the game...

 

...And users that want to give always the max performance possible.

 

Indeed

[Trotmeister]

You get more buttons on the keyboard so why bother with the G13? Keybinding is still the same. Press ONE button and modifier to bind it.

I think you're looking at this issue from a wrong angle. G13 is not actually better than a standart keyboard. If you've got no problems controlling your character via standart peripherals, you don't need custom ones.

 

G13 is great for certain people that find it difficult to play on a standart keyboard where you've got WASD for movement and surrounding keys for abilities. I, for example, don't have a lot of experience of such playstyle, and I find it uncomfortable. I don't imply that playing on a standart keyboard sucks; it sucks for me specifically.

 

As have been mentioned in this thread before, the strong point of G13 (and of a similar device Razer has) is a thumbstick. You don't have to carefully position your abilities around WASD, you just place them however you want and it won't interfere with your movement.

 

To sum it up, G13 is a great solution for clickers who don't want to learn playing a gosh darn piano (I didn't actually write "gosh", forum filter did). For veteran keybinders, however, it's pretty much useless.

Edited March 20, 2012 by Trotmeister

[Toxen]

I've tried both clicking and keybinding.

 

Clicking is easier and more intuitive. It's obviously the way the game was inteded to be played.

[NotDonnaReed]

I have nothing against clickers as long as they hit their interrupts.

 

I personally find it easier to bind all my important actions to 1,2,3,4,Q,W,E,A,S,D so I can attack/heal with one hand and run with the other. I bind my AoE attack or heal to the mouse button, so I don't have to position the circle then click something on the keyboard, which would introduce a 1-2 second delay. This way I don't even have to look at my keyboard, which means I can stay focused on the fight.

 

But you gotta do what works for you.

[MisterData]

I've tried both clicking and keybinding.

 

Clicking is easier and more intuitive. It's obviously the way the game was inteded to be played.

 

That's why all those little pictures you spend the entire game focused on have corresponding numbers that you can hit on the keyboard

Edited March 20, 2012 by MisterData

[Mungadai]

I play using nothing but my massive telekinetic powers. The game responds at the speed of my very thoughts, so I am more efficient then those who keybind or click. Unless I'm drunk.

[Galbatorrix]

Keybinding, honestly just feels awkward to me. I even tried to start a new character and learn it from scratch, but clicking for me is so much easier and I've never had an issue tanking/healing or DPSing in this game or in WOW.

 

 

Can someone give me a rundown of how they set up their hands when keybinding? Do you click on enemies in the environment, or tab? Do you keep your fingers over the movement keys and then mounover your other fingers to press near by keys for abilties? I seriously need some sort of tutorial, lol. Also, what do you do for alts? Just rebind and relearn everything? Maybe this is why so many hate creating alts.

 

 

Personally, I use the arrows plus the mouse for movement and then the number pad's "0" key for tab targeting. This seems to works well in any PVE situation, especially while tanking. For healing, I put my heals on the left bar so I can click a portrait and then a heal without moving my mouse more than half an inch. My lone disadvantage in PVP is that I have to stop for a split second to click on abilities, but my Vanguard normally gets 7 or 8 metals each round at level 33, so it's not that bad. Also, PVP really isn't my thing anyway.

 

 

I'm sure my way sounds awkward to people that use keybinds, but it's worked for me now for 5+ years and even though I've tried, keybinding everything I use has just never felt comfortable to me. With Keybinds, I felt like I had to not only look at the ability bar to see what was off CD, but also at my hands to make sure I'm in the right position. With clicking, as I'm glancing down to see what abilities are off CD, I just click the one that is.

[Drolio]

the longest thread, The Longest Thread, THE LONGEST THREAD, THE LONGEST THREAD, THE LONGEST THREAD!!

[Toxen]

the longest thread, The Longest Thread, THE LONGEST THREAD, THE LONGEST THREAD, THE LONGEST THREAD!!

 

Naw, I've seen longer.